"I think that the humility that you get from looking a parent in the eye and talking to them... It's big stuff, you know?"

Wyatt Smith with students Justin Robinson, Kenneth Walton, and Rodney Moore overlooking the Forbidden City of Beijing, China while on the Birmingham to Beijing Project, an international language and cultural immersion program Smith founded in July 2012. He plans to return to Beijing with eight students to continue Chinese language study in summer 2013. (Photo courtesy Teach for America - Alabama)

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -
Wyatt Smith is a
teacher who once dressed
up as Abraham Lincoln, and who rapped about social studies for his students
at Carver High School. He also took a group of seven Birmingham City Schools
students to China
for a month to learn Mandarin, after raising more than $30,000 from local
donors and corporations to fund the trip.

Now, Smith is one of four Teach for America teachers, or corps members,
nationwide honored with the Sue Lehmann Award for Excellence in Teaching. The award, which includes a $3,000 prize, is given
every year to second-year TFA corps members who engage in "transformational
teaching" in rural or urban environments.

"It's a huge honor, but it wouldn't have been possible were
it not for my students hard work and perseverance," Smith told AL.com from
Washington D.C. "They're really the ones that hung in there when I was asking
them to come after school for remediation or really dedicating their time to the
Chinese language program."

Smith - a native of Reform, AL, a Pickens Academy graduate,
and a 2010 graduate of Vanderbilt University - was able to raise pass rates for
his social studies students at Carver High School in 2013 by 200 percent, according to a press release
from TFA.

Smith said he was able to accomplish that feat with hard work from his students, and high expectations.

"I think when you set high goals for students, they're
very malleable," Smith said. Smith set a goal that 100 percent of kids
would pass the graduation exam, when only 14 percent passed the previous year,
he said. "I think my students were very motivated by the chance to show
that they were as capable as any other student in any other high school in
Alabama."

"We also had a high level of rigor," Smith said. "When
you put a student in a situation where they're using higher-level critical
thinking skills, I think that their retainment of knowledge, of content
knowledge, is higher, and that translated to our students being more successful
on a test."

After spending two years as a TFA teacher, Smith is leaving
Birmingham City Schools and Carver in the fall to attend Harvard Business School, where he will pursue
a master's in business administration. He hopes that he can use his
education to aid his home state in the future. "My long-term goal is to be able
to bridge the public and private sectors in Alabama," Smith said.

He's leaving behind a school system that he believes is
improving. That's thanks, Smith said, to leadership by Superintendent Craig Witherspoon
and increased community involvement in the system, including investment from
the Woodlawn Foundation and the Birmingham Educational Foundation. He's taking
with him the experiences he had as an educator.

"I think that the humility that you get from looking a
parent in the eye and talking to them about what you want to do for their kid,
and the degree to which they trust you, and invest in you, and partner with you
to see those things happen-- It's pretty... It's big stuff, you know?"

"The fact that so many wonderful people in the
community trusted me to do right by their students and, that working together,
we were able to do some impressive things - that's something I think I'll carry
with me in all my pursuits in the future."

Smith's Birmingham
to Beijing project will continue, even while he is gone. Eight students
will go with Smith to China later this summer, and the program is set up to be
sustainable year after year, he said.

"This is a
well-deserved national honor for an incredibly hard-working teacher," Carver
High School principal Darrell Hudson said in a press release. "Wyatt has made a
tremendous difference in the lives of his students."

Updated at 7:15 p.m. to correct the spelling of Darrell Hudson's name, and earlier to correct minor grammar errors.